PREVIOUSUPTOP
John Cage and the Twenty-six Pianos of Mills College. Forces in
American Music from 1940 to 1990. Nathan Rubin. 1994. Copyright
1994 by Sarah's Books, 101 Devin Drive, Moraga, California 94556.
401w

Darius Milhaud

Unwilling to pretend, as Wagner did, to godhead or, as
Stravinsky did, to perfection, he seemed content to show himself
for what he was--a human being devoted to a small white cottage
on the Mills campus and the wife and son who filled it (and the
humming-birds and flowers which surrounded it). In Wagner, said
Cocteau, error is hidden by the hands with which Wagnerians
clutch their brows. In Stravinsky (who stepped on your toes, said
Debussy, while kissing your hand) error is pardonable. In
Milhaud, it is a proof of humanity and a link to Cage, where it
is irrelevant.

Milhaud's appointment brought onto the Mills campus a friend of
Picasso, L‚ger, Nijinsky, Stravinsky and Cocteau (and an
acquaintance of Debussy, Jean Genet, President Eisenhower and the
Pope). In Russia, Shostakovich came to him with his First
Symphony in hand in search of approval. In Paris the Princesse de
Polignac turned his pages during a performance. Students arriving
for classes in the tiny Spanish house on the Mills campus were
confronted by artists from across the world: Margaret Lyon says
that Leland Smith walked in to find the Budapest String Quartet
playing the piece he had just written; another student, asked to
pick up a ringing telephone, discovered herself talking to movie
star Maurice Chevalier.
When he arrived at Mills, he was a symbol of French
culture--the best-known member of the French group called Les
Six (because, as friends, they had shared the same restaurants
and concert platforms: other than that, there had been little
reason to connect their music). By the time he had left, he had
become one of the United States' leading artistic figures,
earning a commendation from President Eisenhower which read, "I
hope you will continue to enrich the cultural life of our
nation." He became an honorary associate in the National
Institute of Arts and Letters, a fellow of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Advisory Committee on
Music of the National Arts Foundation of New York. The place at
Mills in which he taught was named by the Exxon Corporation as
one of two hundred sites important to the evolution of the
nation's music.